The national shouting match that has erupted over the inevitably grim fate of this Florida woman, trapped for 15 years inside a body incapable of performing virtually any cognitive or physical function, except to breathe, has been framed as a fight waged between liberals and conservatives.

Terri’s body is portrayed as an epic battleground between the religious right and liberal atheists. Between pro-life forces and gung-ho abortionists. The cult of death versus the culture of life.

This notion is as depressing as it is just plain false.

A member of my extended family who happens to be a fundamentalist Christian (yes, you read that right), a man who is morally opposed to abortion, called me up this week – appalled.

Government should never have intervened in what is rightly a private, family matter, he said, complaining about Congress’ misguided attempt to step in and keep Terri’s feeding tube connected.

What’s more, he begged, should he ever find himself in Schiavo’s hospice bed, hooked up to tubes in a persistent vegetative state, “Please, don’t keep me alive!”

The false assumptions in this sad case cross over to the left. Friends I’d describe as ardently liberal, and certainly pro-choice on abortion, have agonized over Terri’s situation – unwilling to say the tubes providing food and water should have been disconnected from a woman who does not fit their definition of dead.

Sadly, we have been emotionally manipulated. All of us.

Good people, on every side of the life issue, have been drawn inside the private hell that has engulfed members of Terri’s family. It is a place in which we have no business.

Her blood relatives, who wish to keep Terri fed, have targeted their awesome grief and boundless rage squarely in the direction of Terri’s husband, who has concluded that it’s time to let her go.

His decision was not cruel and sudden, as her family complains, noting that he is in a relationship with another woman. Nor is it an attempt to get his hands on a million-dollar malpractice settlement won in 1992.

That money is about gone, spent on fruitless therapies for Terri. And legal bills.

Truth is, for most of a decade, Michael Schiavo had clung to the belief that Terri might recover. He no longer believes that. As her husband, it’s his right to let her die.

Hurt, betrayed and bitter, Terri’s blood family waged a public fight. And their weapon of choice was videotape.

I don’t believe we would even be having this conversation were it not for that tape. Actually, it is just a few seconds of tape, and it is played and replayed, repeatedly, during every TV news cycle.

In it, you see Terri Schiavo appear to respond to her mother’s face. She moves her eyes. She smiles, or so it seems. How can you kill a woman like that?

But a better question would be – why does virtually every doctor who has actually examined Terri in the flesh agree that she stands no chance of recovery? Why has one court after another, one medical practitioner after another, concluded that removing her tubes is the proper thing to do?

Is everyone mad – or are they all killers?

It turns out the tape that appears to show Terri recognizing her mother is carefully edited – a few seconds of a four-hour video in which she shows no signs of life. Those who know this case contend that these few, random movements do not constitute recognition.

To me, the most persuasive bit of videotape featuring Terri is one that’s shown far less often on TV. In it, she is seen lying, rigid and motionless, in the sun. Her mouth hangs open while her unseeing eyes are shielded by a pair sunglasses, which someone has perched, ridiculously, on her nose.

I cannot help but grimace at the complete lack of dignity afforded the subject of this tape.

Well-meaning commentators, who know nothing of this case, compare Terri to someone who has spent weeks, months or even years in a coma – and woken up.

But Terri Schiavo is not in a coma. She will not wake up.

I cannot condemn Terri’s parents for their desire to hang on to their child. But they lost their daughter long ago.

I hope Terri Schiavo finds peace. And that her death brings peace to those who love her.